


and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

by the_everqueen



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe of an Alternate Universe, Conservatory AU, F/M, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 17:28:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15442170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_everqueen/pseuds/the_everqueen
Summary: Alexander Hamilton should really read up on Celtic mythology





	and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

**Author's Note:**

> for my soprano <3
> 
> facecasts are Jamila Sabares-Klemm as Eliza and Joseph Morales (soft looking boy!) as Alex
> 
> title is from e.e. cummings' poem "[i carry your heart with me (i carry it in]"

In Alex’s defense, musicians are weird.

He’s also, he can admit, not the most observant person. He’s too focused on work, on maintaining his 4.0 GPA and finding the perfect technique to make the chorale melody in the Chopin ring out like bells. So he doesn’t recognize the name  _ Elizabeth Schuyler _ , when Dr. Prevost emails him asking whether he can tutor her for the Music Lit midterm. And he doesn’t recognize the dark-haired, dark-eyed girl who shows up at his practice room, announcing her presence with a light knock. 

“Hey,” she says. “Kitty said I’d find you here. You’re Alex, right?”

“One and the same.” He swings around on the bench and — oh. Easy to see why she’s friends with Kitty, who collects pretty people like baubles to adorn herself. She’s small and curvy, with a generous smile and inquisitive eyebrows. Alex feels the blush rise in his face, and he clears his throat. Focus, Hamilton. “You must be Elizabeth.”

“Eliza,” she corrects. “Dr. Prevost emailed you?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry about it, everyone has trouble with Music Lit at some point. Except me, but I guess the trade-off for that was ear-training. Seventh chord inversions are a bitch.”

“Right. Well, it’s mostly the dates? I get the years mixed up. And the essay section at the end.” She twists the end of her braid. “I mean, I can write an essay. I just always seem to run out of time on the practice tests.”

“That’s fine. So long as I don’t have to teach you what an opera is.”

“That would be sad, given that I’m in the opera.”

“Oh.” Alex blinks. “You’re a singer?”

She gives a small, joking wave. “Yes, hello, another dumb soprano.”

“No, no, that’s not what I —” Alex taps fingers on his jeans. “I’m just not super familiar with the vocal department.”

“You know Kitty.”

“I… accompanied her for juries last year.” And went down on her a few times during their rehearsals. Not that that’s relevant — they’re just friends, as Kitty made clear. “And Laf is friends with everyone, so he doesn’t count.”

“Okay…”

“Right, right. Music Lit.” Alex glances around the practice room. “So, you want to get started?”

“Here?”

“I share a dorm with a brass student.” And John will be warming up for symphonic band right about now.

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“We could go to mine?” she offers. “I have a single. And, um —” she rifles through her book bag “— I left my textbook, anyways. Sorry. I had my lesson today, I was in a hurry.”

“It’s fine, we’ve all been there. You’re a sophomore?” She nods. “Once Qualifying Exams are over, then things will calm down. Just let me get my stuff…” He scrambles around the room, gathering scores and his laptop, shoving them inside his backpack. “All right, let’s go.”

Eliza’s building is a short walk from the Performance Hall. The inside of her dorm looks like a miniature apartment, complete with matching sea-green curtains and woven rugs. Unlike Alex and John’s place, there’s no underwear lying around, no crumpled pages of analysis, no obvious carpet stains. Instead, she has an alphabetized bookcase and neatly stacked binders with color-coded tabs. She selects one of the binders and holds it out to him:  _ Music Lit Notes, 17th-18th Centuries _ , the label reads. He flips it open; inside are pages and pages of careful, exacting print, bullet-point lists, geometric shapes drawn around Important Facts. 

Alex wonders if the inside of her brain looks like that, too: compartments and labels and cheerful  _ pink-blue-yellow _ . 

He asks, “Do you have index cards? And colored markers?”

They spend an hour making flashcards, creating word-number-color associations that are easier to memorize than whole abstract concepts. John teases him, saying he would be a nightmare as a professor, but Alex likes teaching, likes explaining things and seeing the other person’s face light up with understanding. He and Eliza build a timeline and pinpoint the gaps in her meticulous notes. They argue over ways to take the test that will give her time to finish the essay portion (worth thirty percent) without giving her anxiety over doing the sections out of order. 

The world outside the sea-green curtains is getting dark when they stop, Eliza looking marginally more confident about the midterm despite her messy hair and ink-stained fingers. She pushes to her feet with a groan. “I’m going to order a pizza. Any preferences?”

“You don’t have to —”

“Alex. I’m ordering a pizza. What do you want.”

“No olives,” he mumbles.

She ducks into the bathroom to make the call. Alex moves to the sofa while he waits for her, pulls out his phone to text John he might be back late. John, the asshole, sends back a string of eggplant emojis.  _ i am tutoring, stop sending nsfw texts _ , Alex replies. John gives a half dozen middle-fingers.  _ aren’t you in rehearsal? _ The conversation abruptly stops. 

Alex rolls his eyes. Without a ready distraction, he realizes Eliza’s apartment has gotten cold — or maybe the effects of the two cans of Monster he drank are finally sinking in. He looks around and spies a silvery blanket tossed over one arm of the sofa. Weird, given how meticulous the rest of the place is, but also convenient: he snags a corner and pulls it over his legs. Up close it’s obviously not a blanket — some sort of jacket or cape thing — but it’s soft, with a texture like fine velvet, the material going from silver to dark grey when he runs his fingers against the grain.

Eliza storms out of the bathroom and glares at him. “That’s mine.”

Alex startles, almost falling to the ground. “What?”

She jabs her finger at the coat draped over his legs. “That. Is. Mine.”

“Oh. Sorry, I was cold — is it like, an heirloom thing?” His fingers twist in the fabric, yanking it into a bundle in his arms, and Eliza grimaces. “Sorry. Here.” He thrusts the whole thing at her.

The angry expression slides off her face. She looks confused, her eyebrows drawn together and her mouth making a sideways slant. “You’re… giving it back?”

“Uh, yeah? It’s yours.”

She reaches forward, slowly, and takes the coat from him, holding it at arm’s length like he might have contaminated it. Alex feels like he should be angry — what sort of classist bullshit is this, he’s The Help she can repay with pizza but god forbid he touch anything valuable? — but the anger fizzles out before it can catch into a flame, leaving a strange, aching tenderness in his chest. 

A beat. “Thank you,” she says.

“Sure.” Alex is already moving to grab his backpack, shove on his tennis shoes. “Hey, I gotta get back to mine, forgot I had a short paper due.”

“Really?” Eliza frowns. “You can’t wait a few minutes, take some pizza to go?”

“Nope.” Alex forces a smile. There’s the shame, prickling on his skin like salt, the too-heightened awareness of his old Julliard t-shirt and his unwashed hair, pulled into a sloppy ponytail with a rubber band. “Have to make that deadline. You should be good on the midterm if you review those flashcards. Remember when you’re doing the practice test to tackle the essay first and then go back to the first section. If you need any more help, you know where to find me.”

“O-okay,” she says. She watches him as he leaves, her face open and lost and terribly sad.

Alex tries not to think about it on the walk back to his dorm. 

 

***

Proof that Alex is the least observant person in the universe: he forgot that Eliza is in his 9:00 AM Opera History course. 

Well, not forgot. More like he never connected the girl who sits in the farthest back row with the one who showed up at his practice room yesterday. In his defense, she never answers the prof’s questions, and he sits in the front so he’s not sure who else is in the course, besides Lafayette and the two other kids who sometimes raise their hands. But there’s no ignoring her today, not when she’s sitting in his seat. 

She beams at him when he takes the chair next to her. (What? He’s not giving up his front row status, even if his pride is still smarting from last night.) “Hi, Alex.”

“Hey.”

“Did you finish that paper?”

“What — oh, yeah.” Actually he moped in bed watching Netflix on John’s laptop, but there’s no reason to tell her that. He glances at her — she’s moved closer, chin in her hands, eyes fixed on him with rapt attention. The exaggerated gesture makes him bristle, the sense of being the punchline to a joke he doesn’t know. “Look, I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I said sorry so if you’re going to be mad I’d really rather be left alone.”

A wrinkle appears between her brows. She tilts her head to one side. “I’m not mad.”

“Aren’t you? You seemed pretty upset last night.”

For a moment she looks puzzled; then her expression clears. “Oh! Because of my coat.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you were taking it.” Alex tenses, about to launch into a rant on how just because he’s a scholarship student doesn’t mean she gets to accuse him of theft, but she covers his hand with one of hers and adds hurriedly, “But then you gave it back! So it’s fine.”

“Of course I gave it back,” Alex snaps. “What, is that something people don’t do?”

“Most people don’t.”

Alex is about to ask her what the hell that’s supposed to mean when Professor Hartman walks into the classroom. The next hour and a half is a study in patience, as Alex tries to concentrate on the lecture and Hartman’s stories about her years in the San Diego Opera House, instead of looking at Eliza. She’s looking at him, her gaze frank and intense.  _ What is your deal? _ Alex wants to hiss. He dares a quick peek: she flashes him a sweet smile. 

An hour and a half is time enough for his temper to dampen. Surely if this was some sort of  _ Carrie _ -esque prank, Eliza would have accused him of stealing her great-grandmother’s priceless ring, not a shapeless coat that doesn’t even have sleeves. And she implied that someone — multiple someones? — tried to take it. Maybe it is a family thing. Alex knows how complicated those can be — after all, Mom’s ex took him and Jamie to court over a battered upright and some assorted personal items. Eliza has been kind to him otherwise, even offered him pizza when the school already pays him for tutoring. She seems genuine, if a bit quirky. 

And she  _ is _ a soprano, so really, some weirdness is to be expected.

By the time class ends, he’s decided the whole thing was a misunderstanding. John occasionally says elitist shit and it hasn’t destroyed their friendship. Heck, Burr is the richest person on campus and he was the first friend Alex made at Kings. Alex can give Eliza the benefit of the doubt.

She asks if he wants to get coffee, and he says yes. 

 

***

“John?”

“Mm.”

“You know anything about Elizabeth Schuyler?”

“ _ Alex _ .”

“I’m just asking!”

Silence.

“So?”

A groan. “She’s a singer.”

“Not helpful, Jonathan.”

“You asked if I knew anything.”

“Anything useful.”

“Hey, ‘singer’ is like, five distinct personality traits.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Brass player.”

“Same thing.”

“Yeah, yeah.” A pause. “I dunno, man. It’s not like I have her in any classes. She seems nice. Her dad’s a lawyer? Dad knows their family.”

“Rich people.”

“Well, it’s Kings.”

“Right.”

“What’s got you interested in a singer?”

“I’m tutoring her for Prevost. And, I mean. She’s cute. Dark eyes, hips like whoa.”

“You’re talking to the wrong guy.”

“Hey, it’s an impartial observation.”

“Just ask her out if you’re into her.”

“... you think I have a shot?”

“I think that if you don’t let me get back to sleep, I’m going to smother you with my pillow and this will all be meaningless.”

 

***

Alex does not ask her out.

Instead, Eliza starts asking him if he wants to grab coffee after Opera History, or if he’s available to come over and help her study for Music Lit. She passes the midterm just fine, but then there’s the final, and a 15 page research paper. Alex sacrifices precious hours of practice time to sit on her floor and help her analyze her chosen excerpt of  _ L’incoronazione di Poppea _ . Eliza is funny and kind and so pretty sometimes it makes Alex’s heart clench like a fist in his chest. She does things like bake batches of cookies in the dorm communal kitchen to give out to her neighbors, or listen to him go off on a tangent about how unfair it is that Prevost won’t let him take her graduate seminar as an elective in spring. She notices his bi and pride flag pins and shows him her own pink-purple-blue bracelet, trades stories with him about Kitty Livingston.

They’re friends, and maybe Alex could risk that pushing for something more, but not yet. Not until he feels sure it won’t be a wasted shot.

She never leaves the coat lying around again, and Alex doesn’t ask about it.

 

***

John sometimes jokes that Alex is one wrong note from a breakdown. Which is rich coming from him, Mister “I Don’t Have Depression I Just Occasionally Stare At A Wall For Hours Because I Have No Motivation To Get Out Of Bed.” But tonight Alex feels like John’s teasing is a little closer to prediction. Stumbling out of the music library after midnight, skin humming with the sensation of too much caffeine all at once, eyes burning from staring at his scores for so long the notes started to gallop on the page. Juries loom on the horizon, and sure Alex has been performing his rep in masterclass for weeks, but maybe there’s something he’s missing, maybe this is a test to see whether he can do interpretive work without guidance, maybe he’s a fraud who only got this far on luck and the piano faculty will finally expose him. 

The air feels thin.

He weaves across the courtyard. Surreal landscape: mission-style buildings cast into ghostly black-and-white, the wide paved space empty and quiet except for the burbling of the fountain. Alex’s sneakers scrape loud on the sandstone. 

There’s a seal in the fountain.

Alex stops dead in his tracks and — 

— stares.

There is — honest to god — a seal. In the fountain. Like on the Foca laundry detergent, except instead of white and small and fuzzy, it’s big and dappled and splashing around in the fountain outside the music library.   

Alex stares and stares and then he scrubs at his overtired eyes and stares some more. 

The seal notices him and slaps its flippers on the rim of the fountain, letting out a joyous bark.

Oh god. This is him breaking down, isn’t it? Not quite the angle he thought his severance from reality would take, but maybe seals represent something else from deep in his subconscious. Fear of abandonment or financial insecurity or whatever bullshit Freud would diagnose him with. Alex lets out a hysterical giggle, claps a hand over his mouth. Ohgodohgodohgod. He finally snapped. And it wasn’t even his dad leaving, Rachel dying, coming home to a dead cousin, surviving a natural disaster — no, it was  _ college _ that pushed him over the edge. Like one big middle finger from the universe: screw you and your dreams, kid.

The world slips sideways.

Alex isn’t sure how he ends up on the ground, but he rolls onto his back and there are wet hands patting at his face and an anxious voice, “— Alex? Can you look at me? Do you — are you taking any medications that might’ve —”

Eliza.

He blinks, tries to sit up. Everything blurs, rocking lazily around him. 

He thinks he might be sick.

As soon as the thought forms, he’s gagging and retching into his lap. Nothing comes up — did he have lunch? the last thing he remembers was the oily coffee from the library cafe — but after heaving for a bit his stomach settles down again. Eliza rubs circles on his back, making sympathetic noises. 

Alex twists around to look at her. “What are you —  _ ¡madre de Dios! _ ” 

Eliza blinks too-large eyes at him, long whiskers twitching. “What — oh, right —” and then she shrugs the coat from her shoulders and that is not better because now she’s human but also _naked_ , her round breasts and the soft hair down to her navel exposed without shame.

Alex tries very hard to look her in the face. He mostly succeeds. 

“I’m dreaming,” he tells her, because even without the too-big animal eyes she looks confused and worried. “I’m having a — what do you call it — a psychotic episode. Yes. That is what’s happening.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“What? No. Do I smell like — I was studying. Juries are coming.”

“Could this be — do you have meds you forgot to take?”

“No,” Alex lies. He doesn’t want to think about the orange bottle buried in his backpack. 

“Okay.” Eliza bites her lower lip, looks back at the fountain. “Okay. I’m going to take you to my dorm because it’s closer. I think you need to lie down.”

“I’m having an episode.”

“That’s all right.”

“You’re not wearing clothes.”

“I’ll put them back on.” She steadies him and walks to the fountain, pulls on a pair of shorts and a thin top. Alex watches as she comes back to him, gathers her silvery, shapeless coat in her arms. “Can you stand? Here, lean on — there you go.”

She pulls him to his feet and guides him across the courtyard, down the narrow path to the dorms, through the halls to her room. Alex sits heavily on her bed. “Don’t call the hospital. I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

“I’m not.”

“I can’t — it’s expensive.”

“You don’t have to.”

He stares at her for a long minute, waiting for her face to change. “You were a seal.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t —” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t real.”

“Alex —”

“You don’t need to placate me, I know I’m —”

“Alex, look.”

He looks. Eliza has pulled the coat over her shoulders: her face speckled, eyes huge, cheeks whiskered. She smiles at him, flashing long, barbed teeth. “See? It’s just me. I’m still me.”

“Y-y-you’re —”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have been swimming out in the open like that, but there was no one around, and sometimes the chlorine in the pools gives me an itch. Besides, they close the big Olympic pool at nine.”

“You’re a seal.”

“Selkie,” Eliza corrects. 

“I thought you were a soprano.”

She barks a laugh, jaws open so he can see the full threat of her teeth. “Even humans are more than one thing at a time.”

Alex sputters.

“So you see why I was worried when you had my coat. I thought you were taking it, I thought —” she shakes her head. “Well. No matter. I’m grateful you returned it.”

Alex reconsiders all of their previous interactions in light of this knowledge. Eliza is a seal-person. Eliza isn’t human. Eliza has a magical coat. He waits for terror or revulsion, but those seem like silly reactions — this is who she is, just like her bi pride bracelet and cookies and perfect pitch. There is shock, making his fingers numb, but he feels like that’s fair. He’s allowed to be shocked.

He says, “I want to lie down.”

“Yeah, of course.” Eliza scrambles to help him take off his sneakers, arranges him on her bed. He’s shivering but he’s not cold. Just thinking, his mind turning this new thing over like a tricky measure of music. 

Eliza watches him, gaze dark and solemn. “Is it okay if I hold you?”

Alex nods. She crawls into the bed, spooning him from behind; she hesitates, then tucks a fold of her coat over his shoulders. It’s bigger than it looked earlier — magic, right — but just as soft as the first time he touched it, short velvet hairs rubbing against his cheek. It smells of brine and summer breezes, and it feels like being cocooned in the very heart of a storm. 

 

***

In the middle of the night, he wakes up next to a seal, its whiskers tickling at his neck.

In the morning, he asks her out.        

**Author's Note:**

> comments make me happier than a selkie in the ocean. i'm on tumblr @the-everqueen, feel free to talk to me about music and make my major worthwhile


End file.
